Rlys rapped over poor services

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways as well as the CAG on Tuesday rapped the Indian Railways in their respective reports tabled in Parliament for failing to curb the menace of unauthorised vendors, selling of adulterated food and water and delay of trains on selected railway stations and rail lines. 

The CAG audit on ‘Augmentation of Station Line Capacity on selected stations in Indian Railways’ revealed that passenger trains were detained for more than 15 minutes per train in all 15 selected stations except Howrah, Bhopal, Itarsi and Ahmedabad. At these stations, the trains were detained between 15 to 25 minutes per train. The detention of goods trains was significantly higher and was from 21 to 100 minutes per goods train on all the selected stations except Delhi, New Delhi, Howrah and Chennai Central”.  “Passenger trains were also detained enroute for more than 10 minutes from outer signal/adjacent station, before reaching Patna, Mughalsarai, New Delhi, Delhi, Mathura, Bhopal and Itarsi. Passenger trains were also stopped beyond their stoppage time at the selected stations for than 10 minutes at Patna, New Delhi, Delhi, Allahabad, Vijayawada and Nagpur,” the CAG report said.

Criticising the railways, the auditor said that passenger trains were started late form the selected stations by more than 15 minutes and up to 74 minutes at all the selected stations except, Bhopal, Ahmedabad and Chennai Central.

The CAG said that Kanpur Central station handles around 328 trains per day. Only five out of 10 platforms have the capability to handle trains with more than 24 coaches. Due to inadequacy of platform length, trains having more coach capacity had to be stopped at the platforms with lesser coach capacity. CAG observed that infrastructure such as platforms, washing pit lines and stabling lines at the stations were not augmented according to increase in number of trains handled on these stations over a period of time.

For its part, the parliament panel on the  ‘New Catering Policy 2017’ lambasted the railways for “mushrooming growth of unauthorised vending in trains and at stations” . “Unless and until stringent penal provisions are provided in the act/rules and action is taken accordingly against the defaulters, no tangible improvement can take place,” it said.